Of all the platitudes brought forth every time there’s an election,
perhaps none is more sacred than, “The people have spoken.” We learn
early on that voters cast their ballots based on their understanding
of the issues and the platforms, and that the eventual winners
collectively embody the desires of the electorate. The policies they
adopt are legitimate because they are the implementation of the
popular will.

Of course, this story is clearly untrue, and when pressed, virtually
no one seriously defends it. And yet, anyone who openly questions the official
account is seen as cynical, if not downright rude. So on behalf of cynics
everywhere, let’s look at a few questions more closely. Do voters really choose
candidates based on their policy preferences? Do they really “say” something at
the ballot box? And is government policy legitimate because it reflects the will
of the people?

Decisions, decisions…

The fact that voters have a
weak
grasp of policy and facts is so well documented as to be incontestable. A
few examples: in 1997, 60% of Canadians thought that Aboriginals were better off
or about the same as other Canadians, while in 2000, two-thirds could not place
the NDP or the Canadian Alliance on the
right/left spectrum. In 2001, the Ottawa Citizen found that only 17%
of us could pass the
citizenship exam. In 2009, 51% of Canadians believed that our prime
ministers are
directly elected.

What influences voters besides the issues? Well, an analysis of the
1987 Ontario election found that a candidate’s ethnicity had a measurable effect
on
voting patterns. A 2009 Australian study determined that being the first
name on the ballot meant
an extra percentage point of the vote, which was greater than the margin of
victory in 13 ridings in our
2008 election. A month ago, 51% of Canadians said that an important
consideration affecting their choice in the ballot box is which party leader
they’d like
to have a beer with. And as a York University political scientist explained
in a recent piece,

A study of Canadian voting behaviour […] showed that
usually fewer than half of those who voted did so because of their opinions
on a particular issue. When the researchers probed further, they found that
even fewer voters could identify a particular issue that influenced their
vote, and a smaller number still voted for the party whose position they
actually agreed with.

Not exactly the kind of stuff that inspires confidence, is it? And
yet the notion that informed voters cast ballots based on which policies they
believe would generate the best outcomes is one of the cornerstones of our
system’s legitimacy.

The people spoke… but what did they say?

Once people have voted, how should we interpret the results? Take
the outcome of Canada’s 41st general election: a Conservative majority, an NDP
official opposition, the Liberals routed and the Bloc Québécois nearly wiped
out. What did the voters “say”?

Some suggest that Canadians were tired of
minority
government, as opposed to 2008 when
they decided they didn’t quite trust the Conservatives. The problem is that
in 2011, the Conservative vote rose less than
two percentage
points. How can such a small change signal such a major shift in intentions?
In 2008, the Conservatives had to build consensus and work with the other
parties, but in 2011 they’re entitled to wield unchecked power… because they
picked up an average of fewer than 2,000 votes per riding?

“Wait a minute,” you say; “that’s just our archaic voting system!
Adopt proportional
representation (PR), and you’ll get a legislature that truly reflects the
popular will.” While it may sound good in theory, in reality election results
under PR are just as inscrutable as under our current first-past-the-post
system.

To illustrate, take the simplest hypothetical: Centrist party A wins
40% of the seats. Right-wing party B and left-wing party C each win 30%. Which
of the two potential coalitions is the “right” one? Of course, the answer is “neither.”
Whichever one ends up governing will be no more legitimate than the alternative.
In the real world, where PR fractures the vote by allowing smaller parties to
win seats, it is even harder to glean any “intention” from the voters. To take
an extreme example, Israel’s government is made up of no fewer than six parties
(the first-place party not being one of them) and one in four elected
representatives
sits in cabinet. If you’re wondering whether Israelis are satisfied with
their politicians, six months ago 88% of them called their legislators
corrupt―not exactly a ringing endorsement.

Another popular alternative is the single transferable vote, in
which voters rank candidates in order of preference. The last-place candidate is
dropped and her votes “transferred” to the second choices of those who ranked
her first. The process continues until someone has a majority. While it sounds
appealing, as economist Don Boudreaux has
elegantly illustrated, the winner need not be the most popular candidate.
This is because only those who supported the least popular aspirants will have
their alternative choices counted. For the vast majority of the votes―in other
words, those cast for the most popular candidates―only the top-ranked choice
matters. This means that a tiny minority chooses who among the leading
candidates wins the race. Does that sound much better than what we have now?

"No one would accept the argument that a
mugger or a burglar is entitled to someone’s property if he’s
walking down a given street or living in a given neighbourhood. So
what entitles the state to make that identical claim?"

More fundamentally, how can voters “want” a majority or a
minority, or a coalition of parties X, Y and Z, or any
particular result? There is no such option on the ballot,
under any system: whatever party you vote for, you are
voting to elect their local candidate (or increase their
seat share, under PR). There is no such option as, “A
Conservative government, but with a minority.” Or, “Jack
Layton in Stornoway, but not 24 Sussex Drive.” Or, “The
Liberals in third place, but not totally wiped off the map.”

A group the size of the Canadian electorate, whose members
will mostly never meet, cannot engage in anything that can
reasonably be called “collective decision making.” The fact
that the aggregation of millions of individual voting
choices led to a majority Conservative government, an NDP
official opposition, a historic loss for the Liberals and
the near-extinction of the Bloc Québécois is not the result
of any conscious decision or intention. To claim otherwise
makes as much sense as inferring that drivers stuck on a
highway “wanted” a traffic jam.

To the victor go the spoils?

After the election, democracy demands that until the next
ballot we all accept the decisions of the legislators as
legitimate. After all, they were elected to govern!

The libertarian objection is that voters have no right to
use coercive force on others and therefore have no right to
delegate that power to legislators, election or no election.
If another person takes your money, we call him a thief. If
he prevents you from peacefully going about your daily
business, we call him a bully or a thug. In neither case is
it a valid defence that others, no matter how numerous,
supported or aided him in his actions. How can marking slips
of paper with a pencil somehow transform these morally
reprehensible acts into some kind of noble undertaking?

Granted, this reasoning will go nowhere with most people.
They feel that they have consented to the rules and
therefore accept the result. Good for them―but what about
those of us who disagree? How do we withhold our consent?
Obviously not by declining to participate since, as we all
know,
if
you
don’t
vote,
you
can’t
complain. And if you’re thinking of spoiling your
ballot, Elections Canada takes the position that
it’s illegal… although they do helpfully point out that
you can always run for office yourself.

There is no positive action involved in giving consent, so
one cannot simply withhold that act. Remember the
uproar over Rogers Cable’s negative-option billing
practices? Clients were incensed that a corporation they had
chosen to do business with intended to charge them for
services they didn’t order unless they said no. And if they
didn’t pay, their cable might be cut off! Now consider the
state: We never asked it for anything; it simply took
authority over us at birth. It bills us every day, on pain
of imprisonment, for services we didn’t order and may never
use or even know
exist. And despite what any
number of
cranks might tell you, you cannot politely inform it
that you’d rather just be left alone. Frankly, the “Rogers
approach” seems benevolent by comparison.

The clichéd response to the libertarian position is that if
you don’t like it, leave. Well, for one thing, legal
barriers to entry―also known as immigration restrictions―are
prohibitively high, without mentioning enormous natural
obstacles to movement, such as cultural differences and
recognition of job experience. Besides, legal systems do not
change much between developed countries; tax rates vary,
bureaucracy is more or less responsive, but the fundamentals
are often very similar.

Most crucially, how can it be that by living somewhere we’ve
accepted that others in that area may use coercion against
us? No one would accept the argument that a mugger or a
burglar is entitled to someone’s property if he’s walking
down a given street or living in a given neighbourhood. So
what entitles the state to make that identical claim?

A better way

This argument is not anti-democratic. Churchill was right in
noting that democracy is the worst system besides all the
others we’ve tried, and if there have to be people who wield
coercive power over us, it’s best that they be elected.

But as Bryan Caplan explained in
The Myth of the Rational Voter, the real alternative
to unrestricted democracy is not authoritarianism, but
limited government. We need not grant any group of people
the power to decide how we live our lives, regardless of
whether they are self-appointed or democratically elected.
Given how candidates win votes, given the difficulty of
reading anything into election results, and given the
impossibility of not consenting to the state’s power,
wouldn’t a system in which none can be forced to live by
another’s rules be far more legitimate and far more moral
than the status quo? Shedding our belief in the existence of
“the will of the people”―a fiction so cherished that it take
precedence over our individual liberties―would be one more
step forward on humanity’s long and winding road to genuine
freedom.